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By Joyce Gathu
They say that the elderly have many stories to tell. Tales born of the benefits of a long life. Still, not many can match that of Priscilla Edwards.
At 92 years, it is visibly clear that the hands of time have touched her, although her strength and spirit is still alive just like her sharp eyesight.
Her eyes water as she reminisces of a past that is long gone, but one that remains entwined with Kenya’s history.
It is the story of a woman, who secretly nursed the legendary Dedan Kimathi and lived to tell the story. 
Priscilla Edwards goes about her chores during the interview. [Photo: Joyce Gathu/Courtesy]
At her home in the heart of the Aberdares Ranges, in the small Kahiga-ini village Tetu district, Central Kenya, the same place where the legend was captured in 1956, she takes us many years back.
Priscilla is a former trained nurse who believed in the course that the Mau Mau fighters were agitating for, enough to risk her life. The British colonial government was lethal with Mau Mau sympathisers.
"I came to know Kimathi while I was working as a nurse in Subukia area. Kimathi was then working in a dairy company owned by a white settler," she vividly remembers.
She says, "I used to get medicine from Tumu Tumu Mission Hospital, where I was a nurse. I would ride a bicycle all the way to the hospital which is about 30 kilometres to Kahiga-ini to fetch the medicine for the freedom fighters."
And she has proof, a certificate from the Nurses and Midwives Council of Kenya issued on 13 November 1952.
" I had a passion of treating Kimathi and the other freedom fighters," Priscilla says.
But all this remained a secret from even her closest neighbours. During those days, she says the fear of the British government was so strong that people believed that the walls had eyes. And they had reason to, as the village was rife with collaborators who would sell your soul just to appear loyal to the colonial rule.
Not even Priscilla’s husband was aware of her secret rendezvous. " If he knew probably he would have beaten the youthful foolishness out of me," she says.
Besides Kimathi and colleagues, her sympathisers extended to the young Kikuyu girls who got pregnant while in the forest.
It was all too much for the young woman but to her, there was no greater course than that of the freedom fighters.
Things seemed to be working for the good of all until Priscilla was summoned from her home to attend to Kimathi.
Upon arrival, Priscilla discovered that the situation was more serious than she had imagined, "I had prepared tea for him only to discover that he had been shot. I gave him painkillers as the wound was fresh and was bleeding profusely. He was then whisked away by four men to Ihururu chief’s camp and later to Kamiti Maximum prison. That was the last I saw Kimathi alive."
"I later heard that he was hanged by one Kirugumi Wanjuki, a neighbour who was then a hangman," she says.
Priscilla was a daring nurse who in her small way kept the Mau Mau struggle alive by keeping one of its greatest rebel leaders alive, even though not for as long as she would have liked.
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